REBIRTH TRIUMPHANT

The unexpected invitation on Triumph-headed notepaper had been intriguing, but I was not expecting much when I arrived at an anonymous building on an industrial estate outside Hinckley in Leicestershire in June 1990. After all, Triumph had finally gone bust seven years earlier; a final nail in the coffin of a once-proud British motorcycle industry that had struggled through the 1980s in terminal decline.

Strange as it now seems, back in those pre-internet days there had barely been a rumour that something was stirring at Triumph. We knew the failed firm had been bought from the liquidator by a builder. The site of its famous old factory at Meriden, 15 miles to the south-west, was a housing estate with roads called Bonneville Close and Daytona Drive.

I had no suspicion that anything